Tabs

Thursday, March 10, 2011

PROJECT CX: and......go.

About 3 years ago now, I was wrapping up design school and in the midst of a motorcycle design class. The class was very much about visual brand language, and less about engineering.

It was a crash course in basic motorcycle mechanics, history, and design.

Since then I've been wanting to acquire a bike and treat it's build as a design project. Well a few weeks ago I purchased my first bike, a '78CX500

The Salary Cap: will be $1000.00 USD
All outsourced work, maintenance and aftermarket items included.

The Bike:
1978 CX500 Standard
24,000 mi
Purchased for $700
Runs, but needs work in order to be ride-able.

The Plan
To intertwine the traditional bike build thread with the traditional design process - through photos, customization, and concept sketches.

The End Goal
An honest, no frills, budget built city romper.

Thanks for looking, and your comments and criticism are welcome. I'm not going to pretend I really know what I'm doing mechanically. This will be a big learning process the whole way through, but I plan on doing all the work myself.

6 comments:

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out. I picked up an '80 CX500C in January and I'm ironing out the mechanical kinks that come with a bike that sat for 5 years. You can tell what I've worked on because everything I touch gets hit with aircraft aluminum polish. The rest is a rat.Best of luck!-Ash

Great project man, i wouldve guessed you had a few under your belt already! I actually just purchased a 79 that looks very similar to this. Did you actually end up staying within budget (minus the lady crash)?

Hi David this bike has encouraged me to get a Honda CX! I also was wondering if you stayed under the 1k cap? Im extremely new in the motorcycle/custom world and wanted to see if you have any suggestions! Thanks and keep up the good work.

I get that question a lot. About half way through the build I realized that the salary cap would not allow me to both execute the intended design and conduct the maintenance I needed to do in order for it to be a reliable machine.